


une femme dédaignée

by starraya



Category: Holby City
Genre: AU, F/F, Jealously, Too many lesbian innuendos, explicit sapphic sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 06:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14158668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starraya/pseuds/starraya
Summary: Serena Campbell practices deception as an art, luring men in with her silver hair and silver tongue. She promises them fortunes. Flirts like the devil, smiles like an angel. Leaves them in ruins.When she tails a mark in a coffee shop she spots another woman tailing him too - tall, blonde, beautiful - and decides to make her a proposition.-Or I wanted a story about lesbian con-artists and so I wrote one.





	une femme dédaignée

"Hotel room. Handcuffs. Beautiful woman in a beautiful dress. This is so close to the perfect night," Bernie says. They are sat together - _against_ each other on the bed - and their hands are handcuffed to one of the rails of the headboard. Bernie's left wrist joined to Serena's right.

  
"Oh yes," Serena rolls her eyes, "and when we get tossed in a cell it'll be the cherry on top." She tugs at the handcuffs. With each passing minute, her heart beats faster. This could be the end for them. An end not quite as blazing or glorious as they hoped.

  
"It's lucky," Bernie smirks, reaching for a hairpin with her free hand, "that I'm good with my hands."

  
With a few quick flicks of her hand, the handcuffs open.

  
Serena's eyes widen in disbelief, in betrayal. "You knew how to do that the _entire_ time?"

  
"Wanted to watch you sweat."

  
"Why?"

  
"You kissed him."

  
"It was part of the plan."

  
"Not like that."

  
Jealously sparkles in Bernie's eyes, but as much as Serena wants to challenge her to give a demonstration of what _like that_ means time isn't on their side.  
Serena takes her hand. "Come on, let's get out of here before he comes back."

  
-

  
They knew each other before they met through reputation, through the gossip that circulates amongst grifters.

  
Serena Campbell practices deception as an art, luring men in with her silver hair and silver tongue. She promises them fortunes. Flirts like the devil, smiles like an angel. Leaves them in ruins.

  
Bernie Wolfe is a thief of the highest class. They say her fingers are as skilled as a surgeon's, whether it be at pickpocketing or at poker. She swindles hundreds from drunken men at casino tables.

  
They say Bernie was in the army, but lays down no roots now, lives in the shadows. They say she only ever works alone.

  
They say Serena's husband blew their life savings and left her for another woman. They say she blackmails every cheating married man she finds.

  
They meet in a coffee-shop, tailing the same mark: Detective Inspector Metcalf. He's a brute as corrupt as they come, for whom being born a white male had gone to his head, inflated it considerably. As for his money, bribery and extortion had inflated that.

  
Bernie wants to expose his fraud by stealing the laptop he types on every Sunday morning when he goes to the coffee shop. She's got a contact who she can search the phone for incriminating evidence. Evidence which will end up in the wrong hands.

  
Serena wants to sweet-talk him out of 50 thousand. Work a long-con, delicate and intricate, built on the spoken promise of an investment with a lucrative return, on the unspoken promise of her love. She'll make him believe he's wooing her with his irresistibly, so she can dine on oysters and drink vintage shiraz, so he can lavish gifts upon her that aren't soft and sweet-smelling, but cold and hard and glittering. Not that she doesn't treat herself, doesn't fuck herself on satin sheets as moonlight floods into her five-star hotel room.

  
She'll play the coquette, play the mistress, play the whore. She'll play the prude, never giving herself over to the man, taunting him with he thinks he's won. If men want to box up women into levels of fuckabaility, then what better to make them believe they've boxed her up, before revealing she's trapped them?

  
Oh, she can't wait to drag DI Metcalf to hell, she thinks as she watches him leave the coffee-shop, watches a woman, tall and blonde follow him, follow him like a grifter would. The next time she sees her at another of Metcalf's haunts, she follows her, invites for a drink at a pub, the drink leads to a meal at an Italian restaurant where they strike up an alliance.

  
And, over five weeks, they find they make a good team, a great team. Until 50 thousand sits cozily in their off-shore bank account and DI Metcalf hunts them down to a hotel room and handcuffs them to a bed that they had marvellous plans for, before Serena can enact the exit plan, or the "get out of jail for free card" as Bernie always calls it, always earning herself a poke in the ribs.

  
They share a smile when DI Metcalf gets a call, his superior yelling at him, ordering him to get to the station now, or else, and he must leave them. He warns them that this isn't over, that he'll get them rotting in the pits of jail.

  
Bernie laughs.

  
-

  
In the back of a taxi, on the way to St Pancras Serena sends a text to DI Metcalf from a burner phone, complete with photos of his finances. They make for very interesting reading.

  
_I've sent these to your boss. He'll probably cover it up to save his own arse. But if you try and find us, I will send them to your family and friends. And the local newspapers._

  
She sends the photos of him kissing her.

  
_And these. Although I don't think your wife will like them very much._

  
She signs it with a kiss, before dropping the phone in her bag. She has better things to do, she thinks as she sets a hand on Bernie's thigh, rubs circles with her thumb. She has far better things to do, namely the woman next to her.

  
She presses her body up against Bernie's and whispers into her ear about the taste of champagne, the taste of Parisian delicacies, the taste of Bernie coming on her tongue. Serena's hand creeps higher up her thigh, but Bernie stops her, curls her fingers tight around Serena's. With her other hand she reaches for something in her coat pocket.

  
"Souvenir," she smiles, dangling the handcuffs from a fingertip.


End file.
